


Oh There's No Place Like Home...

by moonlitserenades



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas celebration, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlitserenades/pseuds/moonlitserenades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fantine is a single mother who has raised Cosette with adopted siblings Grantaire and Éponine. College has spread them all over the globe, but one thing can always bring them back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh There's No Place Like Home...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fangirl_squee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_squee/gifts).



They’re not siblings, really, but anyone who tries to say anything about that to Cosette will inevitably feel her considerable wrath. (No one has tried since middle school, when Claquesous said something about Grantaire’s parents not loving him enough to keep him, and Éponine being a terrible person who would eventually join her parents in jail, and she’d punched him in the face so hard she’d broken his nose.) It doesn’t matter anyway. They’ve been together, the three of them, almost as long as Cosette can remember. 

And now, they’ll be back together again.

She shrieks at the top of her lungs when she spots her mother waiting at the terminal, bundled in a bright red peacoat, with the massive sunglasses Éponine had bought her for her last birthday pushed up into her tangles of dark hair. Cosette’s bag tumbles to the ground as she full out sprints, hurtling herself into Fantine’s waiting arms. Fantine laughs breathlessly and rocks Cosette on her feet, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Merry almost Christmas, ma petite.” 

“Merry almost Christmas,” Cosette echoes, twining her arm through Fantine’s when she breaks free of their embrace. “Wait until you all see the presents I found…!”

“I hope they weren’t breakable,” Fantine says teasingly, scooping the luggage one-handed off the ground. 

Cosette makes a playful face and doesn’t respond but to say, “I thought Grantaire would be here?”

“On his way, but he said the roads are bad,” Fantine says. “And Éponine’s plane lands in a half hour.”

“Which we already knew because she’s reminded us daily for the past week,” says a very familiar voice from behind them, and they turn in unison to wrap Grantaire in an enormous bear hug. He laughs, clinging to them. “Miss me?”

“Obviously.” 

“Tell me you didn’t ride the bike,” says Fantine, narrowing her eyes as she releases her adopted son. “Tell me you didn’t stop at home on the way to the airport specifically to get the bike, when it’s icy and snowy outside, please.”

“I didn’t stop at home on the way to the airport specifically to get the bike when it’s icy and snowy outside,” Grantaire rattles off, in one long breath. He doesn’t have luggage on him, which means that he must have stopped home at some point. He does, however, have the bright red helmet he only ever wears while on his motorcycle, dangling in his left hand.

Cosette muffles a giggle. Fantine stares harder. Grantaire sighs loudly and sets the helmet on the floor. “I really didn’t. I don’t actually have a death wish, I’m just busting on you.”

She seems to sag in relief, and smacks him lightly on the shoulder. “Next time, don’t. I’m getting too old for this.”

“Yeah, right,” Cosette pipes up, smirking. “You’re not even forty. Calm down.”

“Almost,” says Fantine, raising an eyebrow and herding them both over to a few (horrifically uncomfortable, but at least empty) seats. “So. How’s it feel to be halfway through the last year of your undergraduate college career?”

Grantaire looks at Cosette, one eyebrow raised. “Ladies first, dear sister?”

She bites her lip, trying not to grin. “We should wait for ‘Ponine, don’t you think?”

“Well, now I’m curious,” says Fantine lightly. 

“You know she’ll kill us if she misses anything.”

“Have you all been keeping all your news until we could see each other in person?” she asks, amused.

Grantaire and Cosette exchange a loaded look, then nod. “Just from the last week or so,” he adds, with a blithe shrug.

“Comforting,” Fantine drawls, and checks her watch. “Maybe we should start heading over to the terminal.”

It turns out to be a good decision, and Éponine emerges not ten minutes later, looking exhausted but pleased; Grantaire takes her luggage, dumps it unceremoniously on the ground, and picks her up to twirl her in a circle. She lets out a yelp of laughter, clinging to him, and swaying a little when he sets her down—at which point she hurls herself at her adopted mother and sister in turn.

“Ugh, thank God we’ve landed,” she says, when she has released Cosette. “I got stuck between some middle-aged pervert and an eight-year-old. Also, finals week was bullshit.”

“Why don’t we get some food and we can talk about everything?” Fantine suggests, ignoring the language as usual, grinning. It’s tradition, not really a suggestion—they’ve got a long-standing reservation at the same restaurant (same table, same meals) at the end of every semester. They split to make the drive—Éponine with Grantaire, so that he doesn’t have to drive alone, and Cosette with Fantine—and crowd into the tiny booth in the back corner when they’ve all arrived. Over dinner and drinks, it comes to light that Cosette has been offered a summer internship at an extremely prestigious New York newspaper; that Grantaire has not only passed his senior art portfolio, but been told that he shows “extreme promise”; and that Éponine has kicked the bar exam in the ass and is damn near promised a place at her first choice of grad schools.

Fantine is proud, as always. Fantine would have been proud no matter what, but God it’s good when her children get the things they hoped for. They leave the restaurant giggling and clutching each other and trying not to slip on the ice.

When they get home, there’s a tree standing in the corner of their family room, huge and undecorated. Grantaire turns on a mix of Christmas music while Cosette is making hot cocoa, and Éponine and Fantine dig out years worth of homemade decorations and mountains of art supplies. They sing, loud and mostly off-key as they decorate, winding strands of lights and popcorn around the fragrant branches. They waltz each other around the room, tripping over themselves and tumbling to the couch in hysterics. They stuff baubles with sheet music, or glitter, or fake snow. They make reindeer and Santa faces out of bottle caps; button wreaths; Cosette gets way too excited about paper chains and Grantaire meticulously creates a snow globe that has little figurines of all four of them inside, to put on top of the coffee table.

By the time it’s finished, they’re exhausted, but beaming, and it’s sometime between midnight and dawn (closer, probably, to the latter). Having spent nearly four months apart, though, they are loath to separate. Morning will find them all fast asleep in various places around the room. Morning will find Cosette making breakfast to surprise her mother, and the four of them spending the day frolicking about in the freshly fallen snow. The night will bring them apart again, so that Cosette and Éponine and Grantaire can meet up with their friends (who will, undoubtedly, complain about why the hell they all fall off the face of the damn earth every semester). But for now…for now, they can just focus on family.


End file.
